TABLE OF CONTENTS
About the Author
Miriam Forman-Brunell is a professor of history, women, and gender at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is co-director of Children and Youth in History, author of Babysitter: An American History, and editor of The Girls' History and Culture Readers, among other works.
Girls’ Labor and Leisure in the Progressive Era
“Essentials of Arithmetic Primary Book” (1915)
Annotation
Among textbooks like the moralizing McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers that 19th-century students memorized and recited, Progressive-era arithmetic texts are useful sources for understanding the subtleties of gendering by educational institutions that experienced expansion and underwent reform. Aiming to promote a “work ethic” that buttressed traditional gender roles, word problems about chores described boys like Fred who planted 29 potatoes and Anna who ironed 15 towels. While boys engaged in outdoor labor in math word problems, ironing, shopping, washing, dusting, and sweeping provided the narrative contexts for tabulating girls’ homemaking chores.
Wentworth, George and David Eugene Smith. Essentials of Arithmetic Primary Book. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1915.